Ruby - Check if a String Starts with Another String

1. Introduction

String manipulation and validation are common tasks in programming. Often, there might be a need to check if a particular string starts with certain characters or another string. Ruby, with its expressive and intuitive syntax, provides the start_with? method to achieve this. In this post, we will walk through how to check if a string starts with another string in Ruby.

2. Program Steps

1. Initialize a primary string.

2. Set up a target string that you want to check.

3. Use the start_with? method on the primary string and provide the target string as an argument.

4. Display the result to the console.

3. Code Program

# Initialize a primary string
main_string = "Hello, World!"
# Set up a target string
target_string = "Hello"
# Use the start_with? method to check if main_string starts with target_string
result = main_string.start_with?(target_string)
# Display the result
puts "Does '#{main_string}' start with '#{target_string}'? #{result}"

Output:

Does 'Hello, World!' start with 'Hello'? true

Explanation:

1. main_string: This is the primary string that we want to check.

2. target_string: We want to verify if our main_string begins with this target string.

3. start_with?: This Ruby method checks if the invoking string starts with the provided string or character(s). It returns a boolean value.

4. puts: We use this method to display the outcome on the console.

Thus, using Ruby's start_with? method, determining whether a string begins with specific characters becomes a breeze.